gray birch

American  

noun

1. a small, bushy birch, Betula populifolia, of stony or sandy areas of the eastern U.S., having grayish-white bark and triangular leaves.

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Etymology

Origin of gray birch

An Americanism dating back to 1850–55

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

gray birch

While studying a family of redstarts that lived in a gray birch some twelve feet above the ground, the hen and one nestling disappeared.

From Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State by Grace R. Clifton

The shining boles of the silvery gray birch shot up straight, and the white birch unrolled its patches of dead pallor in the sombre, untrodden depths.

From Gala-days by Gail Hamilton

Into the brown furrows troop the goldenrod and asters, the wild grasses and brambles making a first shelter for the seeds of gray birch and wild cherry that magically come and plant themselves.

From Old Plymouth Trails by Winthrop Packard

There were dry, warm slopes, where the birches grew; not the queenly paper birch of the North, but the girlish little gray birch with its veil of twinkling leaves and its glimmer of slender stems.

From The Jonathan Papers by Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris

The white bark of the gray birch, the dark bark of the black oak, the gray of the beech, the golden yellow of the mulberry and the mottled bark of the sycamore are interesting comparisons.

From Studies of Trees by Jacob Joshua Levison